DREAM Act On the Move

Summer is over and the much-feared midterms are just around the corner, but there’s a chance that the DREAM Act may see the light of day before November. So says Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who took to Twitter on Thursday to report that Sen. Harry Reid’s spokesperson had laid out that tentative hope.

The DREAM Act would allow hundreds of thousands of undocumented youth with a clean criminal record and a two-year commitment to either the military or higher education to adjust their status. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the bill could benefit about 825,000 people.

DREAM Act activists have been waging anaggressive battle to pull the bill out of a comprehensive immigration reform legislation, which most congressional leaders and immigrant rights advocates acknowledge has no chance of passing in 2010.

In July Reid called a meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to discuss the possibility of pushing the DREAM Act as a standalone piece of legislation. Activists have been stepping up their tactics all summer long to win passage of the bill. The window to make good on this plan is narrow: the Senate will reconvene on September 13 and election day is on November 2. The countdown is on.